Have any Member Groups paid to boost their pages on Facebook?

Anything relating to the clubs associated with Cycling UK
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ianmac55
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Joined: 19 Oct 2011, 11:26am

Have any Member Groups paid to boost their pages on Facebook?

Post by ianmac55 »

The committee at CTC Northampton is mulling over spending a small amount on "boosting" one or two of the posts on our FB page.

Are there any other groups that do this already? If so ...

- What parameters / filters did you set? Geography? Age? Interested in cycling? People who “liked” other cycling FB pages? Any others? (I’m assuming that you can set those kind of filters to your “boost”.)

- How effective did you judge it to be? Do you get new riders? Have they come on a second ride? Do they subscribe to your group's e-mails?

- How much does in cost? Did you decide a budget in advance?

Finally, I can see that an affiliated club could get the cost of the boost from the subs of any new members but a member group doesn't gain more money by having more members ... so have you considered it to be worthwhile?

Many thanks!
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gaz
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Re: Have any Member Groups paid to boost their pages on Facebook?

Post by gaz »

In a social media sense, what have you already tried to raise your MG's profile?
Vorpal
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Re: Have any Member Groups paid to boost their pages on Facebook?

Post by Vorpal »

I think it is important to consider what you want to accomplish.

Do you want to increase membership? Is Facebook likely to be an effective way to do that?

Honestly, I wouldn't have thought it was worth much, if the members you have, aren't willing to do some volunteer work to get more members. Leading beginner rides, health rides from the local surgery or community centre, having open cyclo-cross days, being out at community events, these are the sorts of things that I've seen gain members for a club/member group.

All of the people that use member groups' social media pages seem to already be members.
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ianmac55
Posts: 5
Joined: 19 Oct 2011, 11:26am

Re: Have any Member Groups paid to boost their pages on Facebook?

Post by ianmac55 »

Thank you for your responses so far! Very grateful.

Our MG has a social media profile on FB and Twitter (in addition to our own website). These carry details of our next rides - posted originally by our rides secretary to our Yahoo e-mail group and our blog on Wordpress. (The WP account is set to provide automatic posting to FB and Twitter.) FB & Twitter also carry links to reports of previous rides on our blog. (These are posted by a different rider each time.) Our thinking here is that, should someone be attracted to a ride, they can read reports of recent rides to confirm it might be the sort of thing they like.

Thanks also for pointing out that we must be clear about what we want to accomplish. I'm just starting to find out about how we might raise our profile. The suggestion came about because we have "Publicity" as a standing item on the agendas of our MG (our publicity officer gets notices into local newspapers - at least onto their websites - for example).

Locally we have a number of cycling clubs and groups. As well as the CTC MG there's Northampton Social Cyclists (from beginners to moderate riders - a Let's Ride group), there's an active Breeze group, there's A5 Rangers and Team MK who are road clubs, and a good off-road / mountain bike club. We get on well together; quite a few people are members of more than one group. If someone who is a beginning rider contacts us, we tell them about the Social Cyclists; their leaders tell people looking for a little more about us. And so on with the other clubs.

Our Publicity Officer and other volunteers often man stands at community events such as Transition Town, Umbrella Fair, and events co-ordinated by the council's Walking & Cycling Officer. We get involved with stands at the Women's Tour which has started and finished some of its stages in Northamptonshire each year.

So we want to add to this. Should we spend money on FB? On publicity via MeetUp?

Actually typing this has made me think a little more clearly about what we want to accomplish. One area where we might cover our costs and increase attendance / membership would be in publicising our social events on winter evenings. We've put on talks and slide shows by members who've done things a little out of the ordinary (such as the Transcontinental Race; next up is Riding The Great Divide). We charge in order to cover room hire and refreshments. Bigger attendance would improve the atmosphere and be more gratifying for our speakers. Who knows - we might make a profit!

I'd be really grateful for further comments to aid my thinking. Thanks again!
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